OF THE WEEK ‘Frank’ discussion sounded good, was totally bogus
Judy Lawrence is an author and consultant who runs a money management website from Albuquerque, with clients nationwide. She says she should have known better than to have gotten ensnared in a recent computer tech scam, but this one had impeccable timing and could have happened to just about anyone.
And it’s one of a couple of Comcastrelated scams reported in our area recently.
The one that hit up Lawrence started with a phone call, and it was just after work crews from the real Comcast had been out to address service issues she experienced after moving into a new neighborhood in Albuquerque.
“What made it really challenging was that we really did have Comcast issues,” she said. “It all made sense because there was so much confusion with our internet and being in a new community.”
The phone call came from “Frank,” a bogus Comcast employee, who told her that, “It looks like there are other people using your internet.”
He gave her several made-up names of the supposed internet interlopers, asking if she knew them. She didn’t.
He asked if her password was a particular series of words that she later realized contained a reference to a particular male body part.
Again, her answer was, “no.”
And then she gave him remote access to her computer. He walked her through a series of problems, claiming her security settings had been turned off, that she had “unwanted foreign addresses” and that 289 suspicious videos had supposedly been uploaded to her computer. (An extra touch: he opened a site that started showing pornographic images.)
Lawrence did have an uneasy feeling about the supposed Comcast dude, but when she challenged him, he pulled up on her computer his “credentials.” She also did the right thing by checking the URL on what he was showing her, but it appeared to be a legitimate Comcast site.
Then came the punch line: Lawrence could get all these problems fixed for $399 or, better yet, she could get lifetime protection for $600. All she had to do was send the money via gift card.
That’s when she knew it was a scam. When she did reach the real Comcast, the company confirmed that it was not one of their employees and said, “We don’t look at what’s going on with your internet.”
Lawrence said in retrospect she should have been more suspicious earlier because there seemed to be such a sense of urgency and because the intial call had a lot of strange background noise.
Also, “Frank” said he would alleviate her concerns about a scam by sending her an email to confirm payment for his services. Lawrence said she never got the email, but found three of them later in her spam folder. Upon close reading, she spotted another dead giveway: they contained poor grammar.
But “when they took me to their site, they got me,” she said. “They scared me. I should have trusted my gut.”
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For members of the military, the type of scam that presents the greatest risk is the employment scam, according to the Better Business Bureau’s 2017 Scam Tracker Annual Risk Report.
“Victims of employment scams are led to believe they are applying or have just been hired for a promising new career while they have, in fact, given personal information or money to scammers for ‘training’ or ‘equipment,’ the BBB said. In some versions, the scammers overpay the victim via a fake check and ask the person to wire back the difference.
The BBB says if you’re looking for at-home work, do an independent search for the company and job opportunities. Verify the company’s contact information.
Also, “a reputable employer will give you the equipment you need. They won’t give you a check to deposit and subsequently wire elsewhere in order to purchase your needed supplies,” the BBB says.